Burned a Batch

I had some bad luck in the woods today. I burned my first batch of syrup.

I had just stepped out of the shack for a few minutes to do a partial gather, and when I got back, a bad smell met me. I tried to mitigate the situation by flooding the system with sap, but realized after I thought about it that I should have just gotten some buckets of clean snow and dumped them in the pan. I then shoveled all the burning logs out of the firebox.

I had hoped I could just drain a gallon or two off the evaporator and salvage the operation, but it was a total loss. So tomorrow I will go out, drain everything, carry out some clean water, and scrub out the pan with Barkeeper’s Friend ™. Then start over. It is discouraging, but hopefully some lessons got learned.

I keep telling myself that it could have been worse, and I suppose it could have. Tomorrow is another day.

2 Responses to “Burned a Batch”

[…] It has been a few days now since I canned the last bottle of 2013 syrup. With Alice’s help, I hauled all the syrup off the shelf in the basement and lined it up for a picture. We got just a hair under 12 gallons this year. It would have been a record year if I hadn’t burned my first batch. (See http://tedsoldan.com/?p=1225) […]